Project Scope and Individual Contributions
Our independent study project will consist of the following main components: design of an informatics wiki, usability testing of the wiki, and development of a user manual. Work will be divided in the following manner:
· Monique Escamilla: Write initial proposal, design of usability study, usability study implementation
· Grace Lau: Initial design of wiki, wiki content research, usability implementation
· Alessandra Brophy: wiki content research, usability study implementation, lead on user manual
· Jill Detrick: wiki content research, research of wiki marketing, usability study implementation
· David Lee: wiki content research, research of wiki marketing, project management reports
· All: production of user manual
Our wiki will be housed at a free online wiki provider, http://uclainformatics.pbwiki.com/. We will concentrate on current UCLA IS students, professors, and faculty as our user group for this resource. Research will be conducted to populate the wiki’s content. Content will be categorized into the following tentative groups:
· Discussion of challenges to attempts to define “informatics”
· Conferences
· Journals
· Academic Programs
· Research in the field
· Job opportunities
· Key players (interviews)
· Occupational outlook
· Listings of informatics list serves, resources
We will also develop an online user manual which will be linked from the wiki. The primary purpose of this resource will be to provide users with guidance and information regarding our wiki. The manual will also highlight our rationale supporting research, development and the usability design process. The manual will contain a metrics report based on user statistics garnered from Google Analytics.
The wiki usability study will consist of three distinct methods and iterations of testing:
· Observational heuristic usability study at Information Study Technology Workshop (summer requirement for incoming students) and summer school with incoming first-years.
· User statistic compilation and analysis provided by Google Analytics
· Survey developed by the group and distributed to IS students